Good Samaritan Society - St Johns

Good Samaritan Society - St Johns is a small non-profit facility located in Kearney, Nebraska. This nursing home was awarded an overall grade of B+, which is very favorable score. Based on our ratings, this place looks like a good fit for most people. This place was better in some categories than others, but it did not have any bad scores in any of the major categories discussed below. More information about these categories can be found below.

We also wanted to point out that this facility excelled in our nursing category. We gave them an A+ in this area. Nursing ratings are tied to quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home provided 4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Approximately a quarter of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are highly skilled nurses. Both of these figures beat out the national average. Finally, this facility also excelled in the quality-based metrics we assessed. For example, it fared as well as any nursing home Nebraska when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We view these metrics as predictive measures of the quality of nursing care offered.

In addition, this facility also performed well in our inspection category, which is based on the facility's recent inspections. We awarded it an B+ for that area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some are relatively minor. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple relatively minor deficiencies aren't necessarily something to panic about.

This facility also was awarded a strong short-term care grade. Indeed, we gave it an above average grade of B+ in this category. In forming these short-term care scores, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to formulate a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. When we assessed this facility's nursing hours, we found it offered substantially more care from registered nurses than most nursing homes. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents that eventually returned home from this nursing home. We found that 41.6 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

The last area we analyzed turned out to be this nursing home's poorest category. However, even in its weakest link we still awarded it a decent grade of C for long-term care. If you are looking for services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care ratings. On top of providing solid levels of nursing care and other staffing, this nursing home gave the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This percentage is higher than many nursing homes. This combination proved to be successful as this place keeps its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 1.08 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a significantly better hospitalization rate than the majority of nursing homes.